


Kosher Snacks

by AniseNalci



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Ms. Marvel (Comics), Nova (Comics), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/M, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Mild Language, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 18:55:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16310819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AniseNalci/pseuds/AniseNalci
Summary: “So, you’re Muslim, right?”Kamala never forgot that there were still plenty of bigots in the US. After all, before Zoe had her heel-face-turn, Nakia and Bruno had warned her about the concern troll/Islamophobic stance that Zoe had once espoused.She didn’t expect that her own teammates would feel the same.ORAll the members of The Champions know Kamala is a Muslim now. Sam puts his foot in his mouth (as always).Friendship-fic, Kamala & (to a lesser degree) Sam-centric.





	Kosher Snacks

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning:  
> 1) Discussion of religion, racism, colorism, terrorism, 9/11, Islamophobia  
> 2) Donald Trump mentions  
> 3) The fact that Arizona voted for Donald Trump may lead to Unfortunate Implications in this fic which I apologise for; I don't want to fall into the trap of generalisation but unfortunately Kamala has, to a certain degree
> 
> Also, comic-book timing is awful. The timelines in 616 don't add up and it was horrible trying to figure out who knows what secret. Assume that everyone knows Amadeus and Sam's alter-egos, Kamala knows Miles (as of Champions #24 it's canon anyway) but no one knows Kamala's. For ridiculous reasons, I left Cyclops in the gang because it was easier for him to be the catalyst, even though I really wanted to work in Ironheart and Nadia van Dyne in to make it more canon-compliant (especially since Kamala knowing how Miles looks like is canon as of #24, and they met briefly during the science fair prior to that). So, just consider this an outtake of the comics.
> 
> Also, written in Australian/British-English, not US. Soz!

 

It wasn’t obvious to many, Kamala thought. Yes, of course, she’s brown in a world where white is the default, but plenty of people are brown without being labelled with a religion. Of course, 9/11 made it more difficult and swept more people under the whole “everyone brown = Muslim”. Still, as a brown girl, she got away with most of it, especially since she had the American accent to throw most people off.

She wasn’t blind to the more overt racist and Islamophobic behaviours of people towards Aamir, Tyesha, her parents, and even Kareem, whose accent marked his foreignness, and which eventually resulted in him leaving the States. _I don’t want to be in a place which doesn’t want me to belong here._ Never mind that he was a superhero-in-disguise, and that as his alter-ego, people loved him. Aamir was right; human beings sucked as a species. 

It started with the small things. Whenever the Champions hung out together, and snacks were involved, Kamala would surreptitiously look at the labels on the ingredients and breathe a sigh of relief if it was vegetarian. Sometimes it would say kosher, and she’d take a deep breath, whisper _Bismillah_ under her breath as if to absolve her for not eating something that was strictly halal. If there was any chance there was some ‘mystery meat’ involved, she’d demur and abstain from eating.

In retrospect it should have been more obvious. After all, Silk knew she was Muslim. (The whole Korean barbecue was made strictly no-pork just for her, after all, a gesture which was particularly touching for Kamala.) Then again, Silk was just an amazing human being in general, and perhaps it was the fact that the girls chatted about everything _save_ any actual identifiers.

It probably helped that Silk was a girl. Kamala’s platonic friends tended to be girls (except for Bruno now, she supposed, but again, she didn’t really know where she stood with him and that would be a headache for another day). Blame mosque indoctrination. The fact that the first teen superheroes she knew were guys (Spiderman and Nova) and Viv was Vision’s daughter (enough said) did upend things a bit in the sense that though they all got along marvellously (ha, pun!), Kamala still didn’t feel as though she could really confide in them the way she did with Nakia, Zoe, Mike (and yes, Bruno and to a certain extent, Gabe… and Silk, if they were looking at superhero equivalents). 

Hence, they probably didn’t guess what may have been obvious: that she was a second-gen Pakistani-American Muslim girl. (The Jersey part was obvious.)

So when Cyclops brought out snacks from the fridge and Kamala, having eaten before, demurred, and he said, “But they’re kosher! I bought them because you were Jewish!” this invoked a variety of reactions from the rest of the group, who were also lounging about – Amadeus, Miles and Viv on the couch, Kamala on the beanie bag and Sam with his “pillow fort” on the ground near her feet.

Amadeus: eyebrows rising up to his forehead, a smirk on his lips.

Viv: if she could make a facial expression, it would say “Oh, honey, no.” As it was, Kamala could only rely on subtle cues to realise that she would have done so if she was human (which made sense, since Viv had wifi installed. Knowing Viv, she probably used her innate synthezoid powers to identify Kamala’s exact identity).

Miles: “Did I miss something?”

Sam: “You’re Jewish?”

At Sam’s remark, Amadeus sighed exasperatedly. “Seriously, guys, she’s Muslim, not Jewish.”

“Wait, really?” Miles turned to Kamala, from where he was lounging on the couch.

“How do you know?” Sam asked Amadeus.

Amadeus grinned. “Korean barbecue. And other dinners with the family.”

“Without me?” Miles faked sadness.

“What is Korean barbecue?” Cyclops added.

“It is very popular these days. Korean barbecue is an experience,” Viv answered.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Cyclops answered.

“So you’re Muslim? Like, on the news, when they talk about 9/11 and terrorism?” Sam asked Kamala.

“Dude!” Miles exclaimed.

Kamala stood up. “Do better, Sam,” she told him. To the others, she said, “Guys, I’ll catch y’all later.”

She turned, but not before gaining some mild satisfaction that they others had turned to Sam with the same dirty, disgusted expressions on their faces, and she began to make her way back home. 

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t too far from home when she suddenly heard a ‘whoosh!’ sound near her. She thanked her lucky stars that she was still in costume, before turning around to see Sam standing behind her in Nova gear.

“Hey, um, Ms. Marvel?”

Well, she couldn’t be rude now, could she?

“What’s up, Sam?”

Awkward silence. Reflecting back, Kamala thought the awkwardness often came from his end, and she didn’t usually make it easy on him – she tended to be harder on him than most of the others, partly because first impressions die hard, and secondly because he was so frustrating in the sense that he often tried to play things off as the goofy sidekick when he really had hidden depths (and yes, she was fairly aware that her obsession with fandom was getting a bit much since she was now attributing TV Tropes to her friends and IRL situations). 

“So, you’re Muslim, right?”

Kamala never forgot that there were still plenty of bigots in the US. After all, before Zoe had her heel-face-turn, Nakia and Bruno had warned her about the concern troll/Islamophobic stance that Zoe had once espoused.

(She didn’t expect that her own teammates would feel the same.)

“And what of it?”

“Hey, no need, to get defensive. Um, do you just want to talk about it?” Sam pointed to one of the rooftops. “Let’s go up there. Um, do you need –?”

“Embiggen,” Kamala said flatly, and her hands elongated, grabbed the side of the railing, and she climbed her way up the walls.

She felt a breeze (probably Sam), and then, as she reached the edge of the wall, she looked up, as he extended a hand out to her silently. She took it and pulled herself over. He sat on the edge of the rooftop, and she took a seat next to him.

“Thanks,” she said, as she sat down. It was quieter than her usual tone of voice.

“About just now… I just wanted to apologise, Ms. Marvel.”

Kamala looked at him. She wasn’t quite sure where this was going.

“I mean, I know that Muslims aren’t bad people in general. I mean, you’ve got good Muslims and bad Muslims and every spectrum in between, like, y’know, regular people. And that was a poor choice of words, really.”

Kamala shot him a pointed look. “You think?”

“Hey!” Sam put his hands up. “I’m trying to apologise here! I didn’t mean to be offensive. Although yeah, when the first thing that comes up in my head is 9/11 in response to someone saying Muslims, I know I have a problem. Part of it, I suppose, is indoctrination; after all, our media is pretty Muslim-phobic.”

“Islamophobic,” Kamala corrected him automatically, but grinned at him. “But look at you, using big words and everything!”

“You kind of pick it up, hanging around smarty-pantses like you, Viv, Amadeus and Spiderman,” Sam waved it off. “Even a hick like me from Arizona can pick up intelligence hanging around you guys enough.” 

“Arizona,” Kamala repeated. She did forget that, sometimes. It was easy to forget, after all. Miles was East Coast, a city-slicker like her, and so was Amadeus. Viv was synthezoid and knew heaps, and her navigating her way and learning to be human meant that she still had a long way to do in understanding the many differences in human experiences. Cyclops was a mutant, and time-warped, so he was always going to view human experiences from a different paradigm (and he was a mutant teen during a time when mutants were persecuted, so despite him being a white male, he had some understanding of what it was like being discriminated against).

But Sam was a teenager, the same age as Miles and her. Born in the same era, but because he was so far away from most of them, it only made sense that he’d had a different lens of experience. And although it sucked to generalize, he did grow up in a state which voted for Donald Trump, who’d made incredibly racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic comments towards women…

“Sam, it’s not like you’ve had any negative experiences with Muslims. Not personally, at least, have you?”

He shook his head. “To be honest, you’d be the first. Although, we didn’t really get off to a great start, did we? Does you calling me a jerk count?”

She punched his shoulder. “Ouch! I deserved that, I think. In all honesty, no.”

“We’re not awful, you know.”

“How does your belief in God work anyway? Given that you’ve got superpowers, there are entities like Thor and Loki and every God from Norse mythology, and that we’ve got Space Police roaming the world and we haven’t found evidence of God.”

Kamala was silent for a while. “Good question. I suppose, God is all-Knowing, but there’s a phrase in the Quran saying that the pillars of Heaven and Hell are invisible to us all, and we’ll never find it. But my belief in God sort of gives me an outline on how to be a better person, and it teaches me to be kind to others. Well, it tries; I’m not great at it. As for the Norse Gods such as Thor and Loki – who, by the way is a jerk who tried to ruin Valentine’s Day for my school – don’t ask,” (Sam had tried to interject here and was stopped from doing so) “I don’t think of them as Gods; not when we’re superpowered humans. And everything happens for a reason, and even if the reason eludes us, God knows. And that sounded horribly preachy and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise! I did ask,” Sam pointed out. “Do you face a lot of discrimination?” he asked after a while.

“Sometimes?” Kamala said, the word coming out more like a question. It’s more the little things, the micro-aggressions. People trying to rescue you from the patriarchy without understanding the context or culture (again, she thought of Zoe, of Nakia and her headscarf), thinking that just because we have a different point of view – whether culturally or from a religious perspective – we’re wrong and need to be enlightened. Colonialism and orientalism at its finest.”

“I’ll pretend I understood the last part,” Sam remarked drily.

There was silence. “I don’t experience it as much as my sister-in-law, who’s a Black Muslim,” Kamala added. “And she wears the headscarf as well, so she’s generally a bigger target for discrimination. So does one of my best friends, although she’s fair-skinned, so there is that whole other thing because colourism is a thing as well, of course.”

“Colourism?”

“Yeah, when you’re discriminated against due to your skin colour, with white being the default desirable. I mean, perhaps you may not have, since, you know, you’re pretty white-looking. But trust me, Amadeus, Spidey… Spidey probably gets the worst of it, I’d imagine, and thank goodness he’s not in Arizona with you, because…” Kamala allowed her voice to trail off, thinking that it would be obvious what she was about to say.

“That’s true, I suppose. But yeah, I mean, Blake, my best friend – well, civilian, at least, he’s black, and after the whole Trayvon Martin episode, his mom made sure he never wore his hoodie up… I never thought about it that way, or even my mom, and Kaelynn –”

“Your mom?” Kamala asked him.

“Yeah, I mean,” Sam laughs nervously. “It’s not obvious with me, I suppose, since you think I look white, but she’s Latina. My dad’s white. It was crazy, apparently. My dad chose my mom over his family, and I’m not close to my dad’s side, and then, when my dad went AWOL, she was the one who kept us going. My dad – well, our relationship was… complicated, but I do love him. My mom, though, she was a supermom, even if she got called our nanny half the time we were all out together, me, her and Kaelynn… She never gave up, never let us down, did the whole strict Latina mom thing, got my ass whooped when I was out of line…”

“Oh,” Kamala said. It made more sense now, Sam’s insecurities, growing up in a single-family household, with a minority parent in charge in a state which supported a government which had (in addition to the aforementioned Islamophobic, misogynistic, racist undertones) also strong anti-immigration views.

“Anyway,” Sam jumped up and stood at the edge (Kamala was jealous; flying was so useful). “I’m sorry, and that’s really all I wanted to say. And Muslim or not, I mean, if being Muslim is a part of who you are, I just want to say it’s made you an amazing person, and again, really sorry about my foot-in-mouth condition, and I hope we’re still friends, at least.” He extended a hand down to her. She chuckled as she took it, pulling her up to a standing position.

“C’mon, I’ll bring you down. I’d offer to give you a ride back, but of all of us, you’re the best at keeping your secret identity, and I don’t think you’re in the mood for ruining it.”

“You thought right,” Kamala laughed, and grinned at him. “And I’m also glad we’re friends.”

“Cool,” Sam grinned back. He could be so goofy sometimes. “And I’ll let Spidey know we’ve made up; he’ll be pleased we haven’t broken our trinity.”

Kamala laughed and whacked him on the shoulder. “Let’s get going first. It’s getting late!”

“As you wish,” and they prepared for the descent. 

 

* * *

 

"Wait, what did Amadeus mean by dinner with the family?" 

 

* * *

 

**_Fin_ **

**Author's Note:**

> So, this fic was born out of my love of Kamala as a Muslim female character (yay!) and my love of the other members of the trinity (Sam and Miles). And because I'm a bit sad re: Nova's cancellation (and really relate to Sam's status as the Unfavourite), this has come up. Meant to be a friendship fic, but I suppose you can see hints of Sam > Kamala (like they played in the beginning, before they started hinting about Sam > Viv). Apologies for the whole preachiness & religion thing, hopefully it doesn't put too many people off.
> 
> Not beta-read, all mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Kudos/comment if you enjoy! <3


End file.
